I expect to have all of the designs finished by this weekend, so here's your chance for a deal! Give me a vote of confidence and I'll give you $5 off (regular price is $25.00).

You'll get 12 full color 6 x 11" calendar pages each illustrated with a 5 x 5 full color reproduction of my drawing. The color and quality of each page is suitable for framing if you want to look at it for longer than a month!

Finally, a new print! All Abuzz, a celebration of National Pollinator Week, is now available!

This print is 12 x 12" on archival paper. As a limited edition run, they come signed, dated, and numbered. $4 of each sale go to HAWK Matthews, a chapter of the NC Wildlife Federation. Out of my own excitement, I've discounted shipping through June 25: Free throughout the US and just $5 to Canada!

Charlie's been working hard on the camper while I've been preoccupied with the state's plan to put a highway in front of our house.

The camper is finally structurally sound (no more rotting wood) and waterproofed (no more leaking windows). The windows all crank open and closed. A craigslist score allowed us to upgrade from the original non-working stove to a working vintage stove/oven combo!

After countless emails and phone calls to my new BFFs (NCDOT) we figured out the process of getting a title for Major Tom so we could get him on the road! *Hint* Get yourself out in the country to a DMV office and they have a better understanding of what it takes to title a vintage camper.

Fox turned 4 a few days ago and we felt it was finally time to give him a real birthday party... of course, by real we meant him having friends over to play in the yard and eat cake and cookies. We strung up a bunch of balloons, threw down some table cloths and called it decorated.

The real work was getting the gardens tidied and a little less wild. I mean, I love wild gardens, but wasn't sure the parents of his friends would feel their kids were safe in such a wild place. {To be clear, it's totally safe, but appearances and reality are different.}

So we tidied and cleared and junked and mulched and composted and dug and planted and watered and ended up with a kinda respectable looking yard. Of course the kids didn't care what it looked like, the parents didn't scurry their kids away in horror. All in all a success!

With the mild winter and early spring I've been working on yard projects like a champ. An email from the Food52 newsletter caught my eye, though, and I wanted to share this gorgeous garden-related goody: Modern Sprout's Brass Grow-Anywhere Growhouse.

Though well out of my gardening budget, this particular grow house has a classic look and modern features. Read the Food52 description and proceed to lust along with me.

How does your garden grow? In this mountable glass-and-brass growhouse, your indoor plants and herbs can thrive without a wink of sunlight (and a less-than-green thumb). An LED light with a built-in timer ensures your plants get just the right amount of TLC—just add water and let this magic box do its thing.